Introduction to Astronomy

In this class, we will be studying, quite literally, everything in the universe. We will start with "classical" astronomy, describing the night sky and organizing what we see as was done in ancient times. We will then embark on a journey,
starting here on Earth and progressing outward, to study the Solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, and the wonderful and strange objects we observe in deep space, such as black holes, quasars, and supernovae. We will end with some discussion of what
scientists know today about the universe as a whole. Along the way we will introduce some of the methods, theoretical and experimental, that have been used to understand all of this, from Newton's laws, through our understanding of light and matter,
to Einstein's theory of relativity, and from Galileo's telescope to WMAP.